Wednesday, January 16, 2013

Bobby Jindal is the latest governor to shift the tax burden away from the 1% to the middle class and poor, his latest scam to eliminate the state's income and corporate tax and nearly double the state's sales tax from 4 to 7 percent would end up raising taxes on the bottom 80% of Louisiana residents, and cutting them massively on businesses and the wealthy.

According to an analysis by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, Jindal’s plan will raise taxes on the bottom 80 percent of Louisianians, while cutting them for the richest 1 percent:

– The bottom 80 percent of Louisianans in the
income distribution would see a tax increase from repealing the personal
and corporate income taxes and replacing them with a higher sales tax.
– The poorest 20 percent of taxpayers, those with an average income of $12,000, would see an average tax increase of $395, or 3.4 percent of their income, if no low income tax relief mechanism is offered.
– The middle 20 percent, those with an average income of $43,000,
would see an average tax increase of $534, or 1.2 percent of their
income.
– The largest beneficiaries of the tax proposal would be the top 1 percent—a group with an average income of well over $1 million. Louisianans in the top 1 percent would see an average tax cut of $25,423, or 2.3 percent of their income under the plan described above.

Seems like a raw deal there for most folks, because it is. All this "revenue-neutral" scheme does is transfer the burden of taxes from the wealthy to the poor. It doesn't raise additional taxes for services to help the poor (that's what "revenue neutral" means), it just makes everything they buy cost more: food, clothing, other essentials. You know, because the poor aren't paying their fair share, it seems. If the rich pay less in taxes, that frees up money for them to...what, exactly? Stash in offshore accounts rather than go into the state's economy?

Meanwhile, taxes go up on the little people and of course they'll rebel, and Bobby will say 'Well poors, you can either pay your sales tax or I can cut it along with your programs. Your choice." because We Can't Afford Nice Things.

If you thought the Birthers have wandered off into that good oblivion, you'd be wrong too. This weekend the tinfoil hat morons are trying to do everything they can to find a way to stop Monday's inauguration and save America from a "foreign-born Muslim usurper".

Most Americans have moved on from earlier dalliances with denials of
the president’s biography. National opinion polls have shown increases
over the past three years in the percentage of Americans who agree that
Obama was born in the United States and that he is a Christian.
But a persistent minority — between a tenth and a fifth in most polls —
still believe he is Muslim, foreign-born or a socialist.

Those
voters tend to be vehement opponents of Obama, and on Inauguration Day,
they will not be at the party — and they’re still searching for ways to
have the president declared illegitimate.

“Let’s face it, this is a man very deep into an ideology that is not American,” says the Rev. Clenard Childress,
a New Jersey minister and antiabortion activist who says black and
white voters alike returned Obama to office “to feel better about
ourselves and get the guilt of racism off us.”

Childress says it’s
50-50 that Obama is a Muslim who was born in Kenya: “But what I really
care about is do we have the same values? Do you believe in the sanctity
of life? Do you believe in marriage as being between man and woman? And
this president does not.”

Gosh, what's different about this president? At least one defender of the Obama administration has figured out the real issue with the birther idiocy.

Those who monitor anti-Obama movements say the inauguration will do
nothing to quiet the rapids. “The rhetoric since the election has
actually gotten more vicious,” says Kevin Davidson, better known as “Dr.
Conspiracy,” his handle on his Web site, Obama Conspiracy Theories, which keeps tabs on those who declare Obama’s presidency illegitimate.

Davidson,
a retired software developer in South Carolina, has been predicting for
four years that hardcore anti-Obama agitation would dissipate, but it
keeps going, driven, he believes, by anti-black sentiment. “I’ve seen
more openly racist remarks since the election,” he says. “Before
November, they were careful to control the racist language because they
were trying to persuade people to vote against him. Now they sort of
don’t care.”

Got it in one. The lunatics aren't going away because the President is still black. It's always been about race for millions of these bigoted fools. And since these are the loons that control the GOP, expect impeachment to be on the menu before it's all said and done, as the President faces charges of Executive Leadership of the United States while Black.

State Rep. Steve Toth, a Republican, is looking to push his “Firearms
Protection Act,” which would prevent any Congressional or Executive act
banning or restricting so-called assault firearms and extended clips
from affecting the state. In fact, any such action would be considered
illegal, 1200 WOAI news of San Antonio, Texas, reported Tuesday.

Toth’s measure would make it a felony for federal
officers to enforce any such ban in Texas, carrying the heavy punishment
of a $50,000 fine and as many as five years in prison.

“If a federal official comes into the state of Texas to enforce the
federal executive order, that person is subject to criminal
prosecution,” Toth told the news station.

The lawmaker added that there needed to be a showdown between state
and federal government over the Supremacy Clause, which dictates that
federal law take precedence over state laws.

“It is our responsibility to push back when those laws are infringed by King Obama,” he said

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With Republicans controlling the House and Senate and President Obama coming to the end of his second term in the White House, there's still plenty of Stupid to fight on all sides with a crumbling global economy imperiling the world, two seemingly endless wars, a federal government nobody trusts or believes in, global climate change putting us on the brink of destruction and a Village media that barely does its job on even the best day.

Needless to say there's a lot of Stupid out there still coming from both political parties, when we need solutions.

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